The STEAM Project is born when THE WORLD IS FACING A GLOBAL CRISIS DUE TO THE ACTUAL COVID-19 PANDEMIC SITUATION INCREASES THE NEED, ALREADY IDENTIFIED BY THE PARTNERS, TO DEVELOP DIGITAL EDUCATION FOR PRESCHOOL CHILDREN, EDUCATORS AND PARENTS. STEAM which has aroused a global interest from educational and workforce perspectives in recent years (English, 2016) is the acronym of the interconnected science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics disciplines. The Council Recommendation on High Quality ECEC Systems (EACEA, 2019) emphasise that high quality services play a decisive role in improving education outcomes, age-appropriate use of digital tools and emerging new technologies; and ensuring a balance in the provision of social-emotional and cognitive development, acknowledging the importance of play, contact with nature, the role of music, arts and physical activity, which is in relation with our horizontal and additional priorities of the project. Current methods provide students with a foundation of facts, but education rarely addresses how to foster effective creative and critical thinking skills. A STEAM curriculum has the power to enhance participants’ creating, inventing, innovating, and engineering capacities (Watson and Watson 2013). For every $1 invested in high quality preshool programs for children, there is a return of $7 (Committee on Appropriations. Subcommittee on the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, 2014). Collectively the 6 EU countries participating in the STEAM+ consortium all share a common need: under achievement's in basic maths, science and literacy skills. Mean reading score in PISA 2018 in Reading, Mathematics and Science showing the following facts: Belgium: 493; Portugal: 492; Italy: 476; Hungary: 476; Bulgaria: 420 and Bosnia and Herzegovina: 403. The overall objective in the long term is to recommended the new creativity, innovation and digital competence teaching methodologies by relying on the knowledge alliance between ECEC providers containing reliable, professional and up-to-date, interactive content regarding the state of STEAM skills assessment, development and interventions of early and preschool children.In order to meet the growing demand for digitally competent users and ICT professionals, we want to respond to the challenge of providing opportunities for every child to unlock their creative or innovative potential and to develop their digital competence and encourage educators for development and use of digital tools for teaching purposes, and of pedagogical approaches which can contribute to improving competences in all areas — including especially literacy, numeracy, mathematics, science, technology and foreign languages — with a view to addressing some of the challenges highlighted in recent international surveys (EC, 2019).The goal of the project is to identify and share European good practice and professional knowledge on STEAM, to analyse and compare creativity, innovation and digital competence, systems and regulations reference in 6 European country, collect data about the local/regional/national context of partner countries; and the observation of STEAM educational services for preschool children. Project will promote the fighting against early leaving of education and trainings, at the moment when THE WORLD IS FACING A GLOBAL CRISIS DUE TO THE ACTUAL COVID-19 PANDEMIC SITUATION through the development of key digital, STEAM competences and basic skills of preschool children, contributing to the EU policies. Will bring evidence based ABA technology (USA) in preschool education for the first time in Europe. Project will promote the fighting against early leaving of education and trainings, through the development of key competences and basic skills of preschool children, contributing to the EU policies. This project let us possible to have: - research and data collection at NATIONAL/REGIONAL/LOCAL LEVEL - STEAM COMPETENCES SURVEY - Collection of each partner's METHODOLOGY TOOLS - Preparation of an impact evaluation of METHODOLOGY TOOLS - Measurement of COMPETENCE AQUISITION TOOLS - Summary of OBSERVATION REPORTS (observational criteria!) collected during study visits - Collection and Editing of All Training Materials for open access FINAL PUBLICATION (and our recommendations) in English (summary translated in national languages of the partner countries). target groups: preschool children . This is the critical period in which STEAM skills are dominantly ready to start. Participants: professionals from the fields of psychology, education, SLP, early education. Our aim is to find possible ways for personal fulfilment and satisfaction for educators in ECEC. The transnational dimension provides the possibility to set up a bank for good practices that might be transferred and adopted to different languages and cultural circumstances in order to support multicultural and inclusive educatio
Planned achievement: -innovation, modernization, creativity of approach in teaching of science to children, to stimulate curiosity, fantasy, open mind, free approach to problem solving so that entering the school circuit they will feel confident in their possibilities, abilities, skills and adequate for scientific subjects. It is even more important for children belonging to vulnerable groups -equip teachers/educators with tools and competences, to enhance skills development and competences and to boost quality and innovation -improvement of creativity and innovation in preschool curriculum and activities: ECEC is a key in improving education outcomes, it should offer age-appropriate use of digital tools and new technologies; ensuring a balance in provision of social-emotional and cognitive development, acknowledging the importance of play, contact with nature, role of music, arts, physical activity -modernization and enriching higher education institution curriculum, preparing the future teachers, to foster effective creative, critical thinking skills -spreading awareness on importance of ECEC and STEAM approach for young children, providing a strong base for LLL abilities, cognitive-social development.
The global interest in STEAM from an educational and workforce perspective is increasing, STEAM skills are essential for successful school and professional life, and children need to be adequately up to their acquisition from preschool, which should ensure a social, cultural, physical space with a range of possibilities to develop their potential. Creativity and innovation in pre-primary education are recognized as important, as is the professional development of teachers, in European education policy which underlines the importance of support the development of key competences from an early age and the role in improving educational outcomes of ECEC. COVID-19 crisis had accelerated the need for modernization and technological innovation of education systems, as the urgence of spreading scientific culture to counter misinformation and fake news. An early STEAM curriculum may improve learners' skills of creation, invention, innovation and engineering, as provide children, even the most vulnerable ones, the aptitude and open-mindedness to enter the school equipped with the necessary skills. STEAM project works to offer new skills, tools, stimuli to educators, pre-schools and universities training future teachers.